Accessible Document Service

Document Accessibility for the Vision Impaired

Media Access Australia can assist you by creating accessible content. We can help you by making your annual reports, business reports, word docs, PDFs, and most forms of other digital communication, fully accessible for blind or vision impaired people.

PDF documents can present some special problems for accessibility but a variety of techniques are available, either in the original authoring tool or in Adobe tools, for ensuring accessibility.

A document that passes the accessibility checker in software tools like Microsoft Word or Adobe could still be difficult for a person with disabilities to use, and might not meet accessibility guidelines and best practices.

That’s why the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 states that PDFs should not be the primary form of information.

But sometimes you just need a PDF.

That’s where you will require the services of an accessibility expert who specialises in accessible document and PDF creation. Media Access Australia’s Accessible Document Service goes beyond the automated checking tools by looking at the following:

Compliance with WCAG 2.0

Compliance with PDF/UA

Full colour contrast checking

Content order for reflow and testing at 200% magnification

Tag structure for content reading order

Appropriate use of document structure in tags

Appropriate handling of images and their alternative text

Appropriate alternative text applied to non-decorative images

Correct and appropriate tagging and labelling of form fields, and correct tab order in forms

How does the Accessible Document service work?

Following approval, we perform the accessibility fixes and return the corrected documents.

We can also provide, upon request and at no extra cost, a comprehensive compliance report for each document.

How Does Pricing Work?

We need to look at representative samples of all documents, not just one or two, as accessibility issues can vary widely between document types and the source software used to create them.

Because we are thorough at this stage, you can be assured that our quote will be accurate.

Accessible Microsoft Word Documents

Media Access Australia’s Accessible Document Service not only makes PDFs accessible, but we can also create accessible Microsoft Word documents. You might be interested in finding out about having Accessible Word templates created for your organisation.

We Don’t Just Make Documents Accessible

Our Accessible Document Service is able to make almost any document type accessible. Take, for example, transport maps or posters in Adobe InDesign – these can be made accessible to the vision impaired and compliant with WCAG 2.0 and PDF/UA

Reverse Engineering PDFs

With so much change that can take place in your organisation and with suppliers, it’s not unusual that the source document for your PDF report goes missing or is no longer available.

Our Accessible Document Service can reverse engineer your PDFs into Accessible Microsoft Word files so that you can edit and recreate them.

Beware of Poor Standards in Quality

Unless your document remediation service offers all the compliance and tagging services mentioned above, it is unlikely that your documents will be compliant or useable by the widest possible audience. Unfortunately, quality can be compromised by vendors offering express solutions, and the final document will remain to a large extent inaccessible due to the vast array of conditions affecting sight for the vision impaired.